THE OTHER DOESN'T ONE SINGS Movie Review

L'Une Chante, L'Autre Pas

Two very different women who met and became friends in the 1960s share personal and political experiences as they journey together into the 1970s.Valérie Mairesse and Thérèse Leotard star as Pomme, a radical feminist and singer, and Suzanne, a don't-rock-the-boat conservative and wife, in Agnes Varda's schematic, dramatically inert and instantly dated snapshot of the state of the women's movement 20 years ago. One Sings, the Other Doesn't, which was the opening night presentation of the 1977 New York Film Festival, is a legendary film for having pleased almost no one, and for different reasons. Much of the feminist press gagged on the movie's olive branches to the bourgeoisie, while the bourgeois press thought that Varda's personal hearth-and-home sentiments were being hidden behind halfhearted, pseudo-radical blather. Then there were those of us who felt the movie had no characters at all—just some actors with signs around their neck identifying what they stood for. On a more serious note, there's just too much street-singing in One Sings, the Other Doesn't, which is a punishable offense where I come from. I think there's a mime in the film as well, though my memory is failing me. I thought I should warn you anyway, just in case.

NEXT STOP … Zabriskie Point, Baby Boom, Marianne and Juliane

1977 105m/C FR BE Valerie Mairesse, Therese Liotard, Robert Dadies, Ali Affi, Jean-Pierre Pellegrin; D: Agnes Varda; W: Agnes Varda; C: Charlie Van Damme; M: Francois Wertheimer. VHS COL